April 28. ISKCON 50 – S.Prabhupada Daily Meditations.
Satsvarupa dasa Goswami: The Need for a New Place
Carol: Carl was trying to be something he really wasn’t, but he would never have suggested that the Swami had to leave. Swami, I am sure, was astute enough to pick up on this tension. As soon as he could, he tried to move to another place.
Gradually Carl reached an impasse in his relationship with Prabhupada. He couldn’t share his life with both his wife and the Swami, and ultimately he was more inclined toward his wife.
Carl: I couldn’t see my loft becoming a temple. I was raising cats and dogs, and he wanted them removed. He used to call me a meat-eater. But then he changed our diet. Of course he was hitting the American culture, which doesn’t know what all this business is. I have to put it on myself as much as anyone. I could understand and absorb India through an impersonal agency like a book or a record, but here was the living representative of Godhead, and to me it was as difficult as anything I had ever had to do before or since.
Prabhupada was not insensitive to the distress his presence was causing. He didn’t want to inconvenience anyone. And of course he could have avoided all inconvenience, both for himself and for people like Eva, if he had never come to America. But he wasn’t concerned with convenience or inconvenience, pleasing Eva or displeasing her. He wanted to teach Krishna consciousness.
Prabhupada had a mission, and Carl’s loft didn’t seem to be the right place for it. Prabhupada’s friends all agreed: he should move more into the center of things. The Bowery and Chinatown were too far out of the way. They would find him a new place.
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